


My Soulmate, My Star

by SerStolas



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 04:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11096451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerStolas/pseuds/SerStolas
Summary: The Force was a powerful thing, one that even the Jedi Luke Skywalker couldn't entirely explain.  What everyone did know was that most people in the galaxy were born with a soulmark, and that somewhere in the universe, a second person was born with that exact same mark.  It is a gift from the Force.In the First Order, Soulmarks are considered a curse, a distraction from your loyalty and dedication to the Order.





	My Soulmate, My Star

**Author's Note:**

> Star Wars belongs to LucasArts/Disney

The Force was a powerful thing, one that even the Jedi Luke Skywalker couldn't entirely explain. What everyone did know was that most people in the galaxy were born with a soulmark, and that somewhere in the universe, a second person was born with that exact same mark. For some it was a simple birthmark, for others something a bit more elaborate, but most agreed it was a gift from the Force.

The story of Han Solo and Leia Organa and their twin marks on their right shoulders, birthmarks shaped like the Millennium Falcon, was legendary. Their love, and their fights, were a thing of myth by the time that Poe Dameron was old enough to understand the idea of soulmarks.

He had a mark on his left arm, a dark birthmark in the shape of a star. It's shape was enough for his parents to pronounce it as more than just a birthmark. That was his soulmark. Somewhere in the galaxy, another being had the same mark on their left arm.

Poe Dameron knew the stories about Han Solo and Leia Organa-Solo, but more, he knew the story of his own parents and the love and affection he'd witnessed between them in his early childhood, before his mother had been tragically taken from them when he was eight. 

His parents had met in the hanger of a Rebel base. Kes Dameron had been in the medbay, the pant leg of his uniform rolled up to reveal a nasty gash gained on his last Pathfinder mission, while the medics carefully numbed the area and sewed the cleaned wound up.

Inches below the gash, he'd had a mark that almost looked like an A-Wing. Shara Bey had been passing through the med bay to check on a friend when she'd passed his room and the shape on his leg caught her eye. 

“She froze right there in the doorway and stared at me, then rolled the leg of her orange flightsuit up and showed me her own mark,” Kes recounted fondly. “Then she looked at me and told me that her soulmate had best take better care of himself in the field. I knew I loved her then.”

Kes rarely recounted the story after Shara Key had died. Poe could vaguely remember the utter dispair that had temporarily taken his father after his mother's death. 

Some part of Poe Dameron wanted a connection that deep. When he'd first gotten to really know Muran, he'd rolled up his sleeve to show the man his arm. Muran had only sadly shaken his head. Eventually though their feelings got the better of them, and they became lovers despite not being soulmates. When Muran was killed, it hit Poe hard, and he wondered how much worse it would have been if they had been soulmates. 

He decided after he defected to the Resistance that he was just as happy to not know where or who his soulmate was, if he could avoid that kind of pain.

~~

The First Order made their view of soulmarks very clear. Soulmarks, and soulmates, were dangerous. They distracted you, caused you to divide your attention, and divided your loyalty from the Order.

From birth or first acquisition, each First Order trooper as examined for unusual birthmarks. The marks were notated in the child's file. From childhood on, the only time a Storm Trooper saw another person's skin was during bathing, and then just glimpses. Children were taught to keep their eyes straight ahead and off of other troopers. 

Medical droids handled care, if you were salvageable. If not, you were decommissioned. Most troopers lived in fear of the sight of even their own bare skin, knowing they would see it only during bathing and when they were being examined by impersonal medical droids with the power of life or death.

If someone did happen to see the skin of someone else while bathing, and they did happen to notice similar marks on each other's skin, those troopers vanished, never to be seen again.

FN-2187 knew that bare skin was dangerous. Marks were, thankfully, rarely on the face, but even then troopers were taught to remove their helmets only for eating, bathing, and sleep. FN-2187 could put his armor on in the dark, because they kept the barracks deliberately dark to lower the risk of you seeing another person's skin.

So when he removed his helmet on the Star Destroyer after Slips had died, he carefully didn't look anywhere but forward, but Phamsa still caught him, and he felt fear sieze his heart when she reprimanded him. 

He had removed his helmet and exposed his skin to the sight of others. He'd seen troopers disappear for similar offenses.

The murder of all those villages (could they really deserve to be murdered just for showing any bare skin?), Slip's death, and now this? FN-2187 knew he had to get out of here, before he was decommissioned. Phasma would not settle for just reconditioning this time.

So he found the Resistance Pilot. He froze for a moment upon seeing the man. His face and neck were bare, and FN-2187 could see glimpses of skin beneath rips in the man's clothing.

It didn't matter, FN-2187 told himself, though he found himself momentarily mesmerized by the man's beautiful face.

Then the man gave him a name as they escaped in a Tie Fighter. He was no longer just a number, and he felt more...human than he ever had.

In all of the chaos, he saw a glimpse of something through a tear in the man's sleeve, on his upper left arm. Something flickered in the back of FN-Finn's mind, a vague recollection of something on his own left arm.

But then he lost Poe Dameron in the crash and he was alone again. He took the man's jacket to help cover himself, covering a rip in his undersuit with it. 

People on Jakku confused him. He saw more skin in one day than he'd seen in his whole life. Here, people seemed to cover more to protect themselves from the sun than protect themselves from roving eyes.

So many bare faces, including his own. It made him jumpy.

It was Rey who explained things to him, on the ride to Takodana. Most people, she told him, didn't cover themselves completely to avoid eyes of others. She carefully undid the wrappings around her right arm and showed him, in the middle of her forearm, the bird shaped birthmark she carried. She gazed at him with questioning eyes, and despite his fear, he found himself lifting his sleeve up so she could see his bare right forearm. She gave him a faint smile and patted his arm, then re-wrapped her arm.

It left him confused, a confusion he had no time to dwell on during the chaos in the wake of the First Order's attack. Instead he found himself worried for his new friend, terrified of what Kylo Ren would do to her.

When he reunited with Poe Dameron, Finn felt an unfamiliar warmth flood him, and his mind momentarily brought back images of the mark he'd seen in the tear of Poe's left sleeve, and the mark on his own left arm felt warm, but there would be time to think on that later, once Rey was freed.

When he fell to Kylo Ren's lightsaber, his last thoughts before blackness were intermingled between fear for Rey, and reluctance in never asking Poe Dameron about that mark.

~~

Poe Dameron sat silently beside Finn's bed. Rey had left to go and find Luke Skywalker, but Poe had promised to look after her friend...his friend.

He rubbed his eyes tiredly as one of the nurses came to chance bandages. Finn was covered in bandages, so there was little enough skin that Poe could see. He sighed and watched, making sure he was well out of the nurse's way.

As one nurse unwrapped the bandages on Finn's left arm, Poe happened to glance up.

His world went sideways.

There on Finn's upper left arm was a mark somehow paler than Finn's own beautiful, dark skin: birthmark, in the shape of a star.

Poe rolled up the sleeve of his shirt and stared back and forth between his mark and Finn's, his heart pounding. The nurse paused as she began reapplying bandages to Finn and caught sight of the marks. She smiled faintly. “We'll add you to the list, and you and the General will be the first ones we tell when he finally wakes up.”

The question was, Poe thought, when would his soulmate wake up?

~~

It took almost six weeks before Finn regained consciousness. Poe wasn't there when he woke up. The Doctor kindly padded his hand and told him that his soulmate was on a mission for the General, but that Commander Dameron was expected back within a few weeks. His friend Rey was safe, but off seeking Luke Skywalker. They'd had a transmission that she'd found him and she was safe a few weeks ago, though nothing since.

Finn found himself mouthing the word “soulmate” over and over as his brain went into overdrive. 

In the First Order, finding someone with your matching mark meant decommissioning, death. There were whispers among some troopers of lovely stories of soulmates, but most resolutely ignored those, remind themselves and those around them that soulmates were a danger, to distract you from your loyalty to the order, and that soulmates were incapable of putting the Order first.

But Finn was no longer among the First Order. He clearly hadn't been decommissioned, given the amount of effort the Resistance had put into his healing.

The fondness that the Doctor used when she spoke the word “soulmates” made him wonder. He finally had the chance to ask a question of a nurse tending him almost a day later, after hours and hours of poking and prodding and more sleep.  
The Twi'lek's look was sympathetic as he rolled up the leg of his pant and showed a perfectly oval shape on his calf. Soulmates, he told Finn, were a gift from the Force, meant to be treasured and loved.

Finn was left to ponder over this in the dark of night. His mind whirled in part with fear, anticipation, and, more importantly, hope.

He spent the next few weeks meeting with a therapist, doctors, and then when the doctors cleared him, General Leia Organa and her top officers. He began telling them everything he knew about the First Order over the next few days, when he was not in physical therapy or in his room in the medical wing.

Others came to visit him – pilots that knew Poe, ground troopers, even some civilians on base. The story of how he'd rescued Poe (though from Finn's standpoint it was the other way around), and how he'd stood toe to toe, even if just for a few minutes, with Kylo Ren made him a legend around base.

He thought he would cry when they offered him a place in the Resistance. Right now he was confined to a chair: the doctors had told him the road to standing on his own two feet again would be long and difficult, but they did believe he would regain the ability over time with the right treatment and therapy. In the First Order, they simply would have disposed of him.

He found himself worrying over Poe's absence, rubbing frequently at the mark on his arm. General Leia gave him what updates she could, assuring him that Poe was still alive at each check in, but still undercover.

Finn lay awake some nights staring up at the medbay ceiling as he slowly adjusted to the strangeness of this place. The First Order, he decided, had lied to their troopers about almost everything. Now he felt fear not from seeing the skin of others, or his own, but at the thought that he would never see Poe Dameron again.

He was in physical therapy late one afternoon, almost four weeks after he'd woken up. He winced as the therapist manipulated his legs, working the muscles slowly. His hands were gripping the bars of his chair, his eyes shut against the pain, when he heard a sigh of relief from the doorway.

His eyes popped open, and standing there, looking tired and dirty, but openly relieved, was Commander Poe Dameron.

Poe's eyes trailed along Finn's left arm, and the star mark, then up to Finn's warm brown eyes. Poe's own burnt umber eyes flared when Finn met his gaze, and slowly, carefully, he rolled up the sleeve of his orange flightsuit.

Finn felt his heart hammering in his chest as he stared at the matching star there. Then Poe's smile fell and Finn realized he'd been quiet for too long.

“Poe, no, please,” Finn's voice broke out before Poe could leave the room completely. 

When Poe looked back over his shoulder, Finn held his arms out, as he'd seen others on base do to their soulmates.

The joy that lit Poe's expression warmed Finn to his core.

Poe crossed the distance between them and dropped to his knees in front of Finn, and the physical therapist wisely got out of the way.

Slowly, reverantly, Poe wrapped his arms around Finn's waist, pressing his dirt and sweat streaked face against Finn's soft black tshirt. Finn wrapped his arms back around Poe's shoulders and let his soulmate listen to the sound of his beating heart.

"My Soulmate," Finn whispered.

"My Star," Poe responded, tone full of love.

And in that moment, all was right in the universe. The First Order was still out there, Finn still had a long road to recovery, but they were no longer alone.

They had each other, and it was enough.


End file.
